Pages

Dell on Friday said it acquired AppAssure, a developer of data protection software for physical and virtual server and cloud environments.

With the acquisition, Dell gets its first data protection software to go with its fast-growing storage hardware business, which was also built primarily on a string of acquisitions.

The acquisition also means that Dell is in a position to build a storage infrastructure offering stretching from the hardware to the data protection software all the way to the cloud, and tie it with its server business and its Force10 networking technology as part of a converged infrastructure offering.

Dell declined to comment on the acquisition beyond what it said in its press release.

However, Darren Thomas, vice president and general manager of Dell Storage, wrote in a blog post that Dell plans to eventually integrate AppAssure as part of a complete storage infrastructure offering.

"Dell will extend the benefit of AppAssure across our enterprise solutions and services portfolio. Initially, it will be a software-only solution, and then over time we will offer additional data protection solutions tightly integrated in our Fluid Data architecture as we’ve done with our other acquired IP, including EqualLogic, Compellent and the Fluid File System. Customers will be able to manage data end-to-end, not in silos of servers and storage, or islands of sites," Thomas wrote.

AppAssure, founded in 2006, develops software that provides fast backup and recovery of physical servers as well as virtual servers based on VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Citrix XenServer hypervisors.

The company guarantees reliable application recovery from customers’ servers to their datacenter and their cloud.

The acquisition shows that Dell is moving towards a complete data protection offering, said Paul Clifford, president of Davenport Group, a St. Paul-based solution provider and Dell partner.

Clifford, citing Dell acquisitions of AppAssure, storage hardware vendors EqualLogic and Compellent, and cloud technology vendor Boomi, said what Dell is doing is nothing short of incredible.

"With Dell, you will be able to pull data all the way through to the cloud," he said.

Dell currently has partnerships with a number of data protection vendors, particularly CommVault. How the acquisition of AppAssure might impact those relationships has yet to be addressed publicly by Dell.

Clifford said that the data protection software partnerships have worked well for Dell.

"It allows Dell to be agnostic," he said. "But once a vendor makes an acquisition, the partnership play changes. And if Dell moves into this area, it had better be with good technology. Once you make a choice like this, you limit your partnership. It doesn't mean you end those partnerships. But you serve more of a fulfillment role, and not a partner role."

Clifford said it is not clear that Dell absolutely needed an acquisition like AppAssure. "However, Dell has made a lot of great acquisitions of storage IP (intellectual property) over the last few years," he said. "If Dell's software acquisition is as good as its other acquisitions, that will be wonderful. Dell hasn't missed yet."

Clifford said he tries to avoid using that overused word "synergy," but that is the best word for describing what Dell is doing.

"There is 'synergy' coming from Dell and its acquisitions," he said. "Dell has done a good job taking advantage of its acquired technology."